


You Are What You Eat

by abbacchihoe



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Pokkopikku, Sort Of, or fantasy, sci fi undertones, vegan!pieck, you can look at it either way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 17:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15247905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbacchihoe/pseuds/abbacchihoe
Summary: As a means to expose him to vegan cuisine, Pieck transforms Porco into a pig via an elixir, and hilarity (and a reference to the pilot episode of Black Mirror) ensues. Is slightly less stupid than it sounds. Really.





	You Are What You Eat

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: this was originally going to be a porco rosso AU. i kinda wish i had stuck with the idea, but oh well. too late now. then again, there's always next time...

When it came to pigs, Porco Galliard was quite possibly the biggest aficionado of them all.

He was most particularly fond of their flesh, whether it was presented in wavy, crispy strips, thick, succulent slabs, or thin, salty slices. This was partly because his profession was a butcher and also partly because he was American, which meant his diet was high in practically anything that contained cholesterol, most notably pork.

Or perhaps his partiality for pork appertained more to his name than it did his upbringing or birthplace, as his name paralleled that of Galliard Butcher Shop’s specialty. He initially abhorred the name his parents had given him, as it ensured that he was easy picking on the school playground, whereupon his less atypically named peers would tease him until they were blue in the face. But as time elapsed and the persecution became less persistent, the more he embraced his name, the more appropriate it appeared.

Eventually, his partiality for his name corresponded to his for pigs, so much so that he would oftentimes affirm that he wouldn’t be the slightest bit unsettled if he were to one day wake up as one.

Until he did.

He didn’t _just_ rouse from his slumber as a pig, the same way one doesn’t _just_ rouse with a hangover or a raging boner. There was a perfectly good explanation as to why he had awoken over a thousand pounds heavier, pink as cotton candy, and with a snout in place of a nose; it pertained to the animal rights activists that had protested outside his parents’ butcher shop the day prior. Of this, he was absolutely certain.

In retrospect, he should’ve suspected something was off about them straightaway, for what American _doesn’t_ eat meat? But the more he pondered the previous day’s events, the more he realized that the protesters’ peculiarities extended well beyond simply not approving of meat consumption.

There had been a girl—Pieck, they had both attended Liberio High, if he recalled correctly; he had longed to ask her out but never did on account of her being staggeringly out of his league—her hair as black as his heart supposedly was, her eyes warm even as she bellowed obscenities at the top of her lungs and hurled pebbles at the mercifully infrangible windows. At one point, she had gotten on all fours, and the cement sidewalk scraped her knees as her like-minded companions mimicked slitting the nape of her neck with foam swords, ketchup spurting from the pouch she had placed there; Porco had pretended not to notice no more than he had pretended to be unperturbed when the girl crumpled to the ground theatrically.

It wasn’t until the sun was descending in the horizon and the sky was a near-nauseating combination of purple, pink, and orange that they, finally and reluctantly, left, apart from one individual: Pieck, the one who had pantomimed a pig as it is, well, butchered. It was then that he, finally and reluctantly, emerged from his shop and ordered her to fuck off, get, shoo, neither of which she did; instead, she had offered him a vomit-green elixir, promising him longevity and vigor shall he drink it.

And drink it he did, but only because it was the only way she would indeed fuck off, get, shoo. It tasted as unpalatable as it appeared; he spat it out promptly. In response, she had impelled him to drink what he hadn’t expelled, and begrudgingly, he obeyed, his face blenching as the foul-tasting concoction slid down his throat.

Porco Galliard firmly believed that there was no such thing as fairy tales, no such thing as magic potions, but he knew, and beyond the shadow of a doubt, no less, that the elixir he had choked down had precipitated his unfavorable transformation, and that if Pieck was responsible, she could reverse it.

Fortunately, Porco wasn’t entirely unrecognizable, as evidenced by his older brother, Marcel’s, vociferous “WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO YOU, LITTLE BRO” when he sat at the kitchen table. No sooner had he did that than he realized the sheer absurdity of the action, as the chair collapsed under his weight, and he plopped onto the tile with a thud that reverberated throughout the entire house.

Porco tried to speak, but alas, all that came out was a succession of _oinks,_ sharp and sudden, one after the other.

“I’ll take that as a ‘I have no clue,’” Managed Marcel in between bites of bacon. Through beady, black eyes, Porco glared at him, and it was then that Marcel put two and two together and spat his bacon, slick and soft with saliva, into a napkin.

“Don’t take it personally,” Marcel said, but by then Porco was already out the door, his hooves clacking on the sidewalk as he clomped towards nowhere in particular, as Pieck’s whereabouts were unknown to him. Perhaps it was fate, or pure coincidence, but he happened upon her nevertheless when his snout nudged her knee. She was en route to another protest, from the looks of it, but apparently this unanticipated encounter piqued her interest more, for she dropped the sign she had been holding. She proceeded to kneel and scrutinize him in disbelief, her hands tugging at his blonde hair that ordinarily would be slicked back but wasn’t today on account of the fact that he now had hooves for hands; otherwise known as the only aspect that distinguished him from a regular pig.

“It worked,” She whispered. Porco needed no further clarification; he knew all too well what she was referring to.

She then tightened her grip on his hair and pulled him towards someplace as he quite literally squealed in protest. Behind them, a bird descended on her disregarded sign, it’s beak poking through the cardboard, slowly but certainly reducing it to nothing more than slivers of the stuff.

* * *

When Pieck shoved Porco inside her apartment, he expected her to experiment on him some more, force another magic potion down his gullet, perhaps. Her cooking him a meal composed of plants was precisely what he least expected.

The journey to her apartment would have been exceptional, or at the very least diverting, had she not proclaimed that Porco was a typical pig with a realistic wig attached to its head whenever a passerby inquired as to why she was strolling down the sidewalk with such an atypical pet. If Porco’s vocabulary wasn’t currently limited to squeals, oinks, and grunts, he would’ve undoubtedly uncovered the truth.

Presently, Pieck piled Porco’s plate high with what looked like a red pepper stuffed with dog excrement but what she claimed was a red pepper stuffed with paprika spiced quinoa, corn, and black beans. Careful not to break one of her chairs, too, Porco stood adjacent to the stove; Pieck very nearly stumbled over him several times as she cooked. He remained there even when she placed his meal before him and he grunted in repugnance, as if to say _the fuck is this?_

“It’s a Mexican quinoa stuffed pepper,” She said, practically reading his mind, “Eat it if you wanna be human again.”

Porco Galliard had never eaten anything quicker in his life.

Afterwards, his belly full of food void of cholesterol for once, he waited for a fairy tale-esque transformation, for his hooves to become hands and feet, for his snout to become a nose, for his curly tail to disappear. Miraculously, his tail did disappear, and there was an indescribable sensation in his throat that he was certain meant he was re-bestowed with the ability of speech…but there was nothing else. He was still a pig, albeit a talking, tailless one, but at least he could properly express his outrage now.

“Well, I ate my slop, pun fully intended,” Porco said, “So why the fuck am I still a pig?”

“You’re gonna have to eat a lot more than a stuffed pepper if you wanna be human once more,” She replied as she placed his empty plate in the sink, “YAWYE takes a week tops to wear off.”

Porco blinked; his black and beady eyes must’ve reverted to their usual bright and blue, as he could see considerably clearer. “Pardon?”

The sink’s faucet came to life; water splashed onto the plate, and what little remained of his meal swirled down the drain. “It’s the name of the elixir I forced you to drink yesterday, the same one that put you in this peculiar predicament. Technically, the acronym is YAWYE, but its full name is You Are What You Eat…”

Porco harrumphed. “And what exactly do you plan to accomplish by using this…YAWYE?”

“Because it’s the only way meat lovers such as yourself will ever eat vegan cuisine.”

“Yeah, but…of all the people in Liberio, why _me?”_

Pieck simply shrugged, as if it was obvious. Maybe it was. “Because I think you’re kinda cute. And you never talked to me in high school, so I figured the only way you would is if I gave you an absurdly good reason to. Hence, your pig-ness.”

Whether pigs were capable of blushing, Porco hadn’t a clue. But if they couldn’t, then he was more human than he presumed, for the pinkness in his cheeks coincided with the rest of him.

* * *

For the remainder of the week, not only did Porco have the opportunity to sample foods he otherwise never would’ve, he had the opportunity to sample married life as well.

Sure, it was the twenty-first century, and very few women were housewives anymore, but even so, he couldn’t help but feel as if Pieck was his spouse, existing solely to prepare his dinner and perform other such duties, primarily of the wifely variety.

When he had apprised her of this, she had called him a sexist pig—both in the figurative and literal sense. He had half-expected her meals to cease after that, but if anything, she fed him more and more, as if fattening him up for slaughter, ironically enough.

Eventually, they had become so comfortable in each other’s presence that Pieck would oftentimes crawl around her little apartment on all fours, a fact that nonplussed Porco so profusely that he couldn’t refrain from inquiring why she did something only infants and animals did.

“It just…feels more natural,” She had admitted, “We _did_ start out as animals, after all. Hell, we _are_ animals. Scientifically speaking.”

“If ‘we are what we eat,’ then wouldn’t you be a leaf of lettuce if you were to ever drink your own elixir?” He asked on a rather rainy Thursday. He was almost entirely human by then; the sole commonality between him and swine was their ridiculous snouts.

Pieck glared at him from across the table. His former weight had returned; therefore he could finally sit in a chair without it smashing beneath him. “You’ve eaten enough of my meals to know that I don’t live off lettuce alone.” Then: “But then again, YAWYE turns people into the food they consume the most…and I do eat a lot of salad…”

Porco simpered smugly; his smirk vanished as instantly as it had appeared when Pieck deposited before him a plate, upon which was something that resembled, smelled, even _tasted,_ like bacon.

“You hypocrite!” He shouted, spitting out the strip he had sampled as if it had been poisoned. “This is bacon!”

“It’s _vegan_ bacon,” She corrected. “Tastes an awful lot like the real thing, huh?”

Skeptically, curiously, Porco inspected the “bacon,” poking at it with his fork. (His hands were no longer hooves, thankfully). He then slipped it through his lips, expectorated pieces and all.

“You’re disgusting,” Pieck observed.

“What?” Exclaimed Porco, though with a masticated mound of imitation bacon in his mouth, it sounded more like “wuh?” “It comes out the same place, anyway.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re disgusting…er.”

He arrived at her apartment the next day unreservedly human, without so much as a pink hair on his body. “If I had a dollar for every time Marcel alluded to a particular scene in the pilot episode of _Black Mirror_ this past week…” He mused as he took his usual seat at the table, his hands folded as if in prayer. When he noticed Pieck hadn’t budged since he barged in, he stood up and said, not to himself this time, “What’s on the menu today, chef Pieck?”

“Oh, I dunno,” She said, her head cocked to the side in contemplation, “I’m kinda in the mood for—HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU’RE HUMAN AGAIN!”

And with that she sprinted towards him, her dark hair whipping behind her like ribbons flowing in the wind. She was heavier than her slim figure attested, and Porco fathomed this firsthand when she threw herself at him. Together, the two tumbled onto the carpet, their faces—their _lips—_ inches apart.

“For your information, I’ll still eat pork,” He remarked, bacon on his breath, coincidentally. _No biggie,_ she thought, _He went a whole week without the stuff, it’s the least he deserves._

 _“Buuuut?”_ She pressed.

“ _Buuuut_ I won’t eat it as often?”

She grinned. “That’s more like it.”

Returning her smile, Porco pecked her lips, pulling back much too soon. Pieck leaned closer and properly kissed him, knowing full well he would taste of bacon, knowing full well that it was against her moral code to so much as sample the proverbial forbidden fruit. But the more he kissed her, and the more she kissed him, the less it occurred to her that she could taste dead pig on his tongue.

“I’m not making out with the woman who turned me into a pig,” He murmured in between kisses.

“And I’m not making out with the man who has bacon breath,” She said as she reciprocated his kisses, each one more concupiscent than its predecessor.

Needless to say, they had done more than merely make out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> it was probably (definitely) obvious, but this was my first time writing pokkopikku! how'd i do?


End file.
